


where we put our sorrow

by skyward_bloom



Series: war of the foxes [3]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Background Dorian Pavus/Cullen Rutherford - Freeform, Disability, F/M, Minor Original Character(s), POV Lavellan (Dragon Age), Post-Dragon Age: Inquisition - Trespasser DLC
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-09
Updated: 2020-02-09
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:42:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22624234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skyward_bloom/pseuds/skyward_bloom
Summary: There’s a deep, profound look of regret in his eyes. “I’m sorry. You deserved better.”“I did,” she agrees.
Relationships: Female Lavellan/Solas
Series: war of the foxes [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1627687
Comments: 7
Kudos: 34





	where we put our sorrow

**Author's Note:**

> > You cannot get in the way of anyone’s path to God.
>> 
>> \- Richard Siken, “War of the Foxes”

In a quiet moment, on the back of a carriage headed to the northern border of Orlais, Lavellan closes her eyes and asks the voices from the Well, _What can you teach me?_

 _Anything,_ they say separately and all at once, echoing into eternity. _What do you wish to know?_

She asks them to teach her to speak, so they do. They give her words so familiar it feels impossible that she hadn’t known them before now. The language makes a home inside of her, molding perfectly into every little corner, filling up the vacant spaces that had been waiting for them all this time. She tastes the syllables on her tongue: _Viran. Masal. Tasallan. Var’landivalis him sa’bellanaris san elgar_. Blessings and curses, lost cities, colors the humans have no particular names for. She says them over and over, almost feverishly, as if to make up for all the years she wasted not knowing.

They tell her, too, about areas of the Fade where no one travels anymore, about the spirits who live there, who embody untranslatable ideas and indescribable emotions. And the voices never ask for anything—can’t, because they’re only memories, shadows of people long dead—but she gets the feeling they would ask her to visit those places if they could. (Or maybe, she thinks, that’s just something she’s convinced herself of all on her own. Maybe she’s forgotten how to want things without other people asking for them.)

So she does. In her dreams that night she walks to the far, hidden reaches, because even with the Anchor gone, her soul still remembers how to exist here significantly and give her presence weight. Waiting for her in the spaces the voices described are grand halls, lush forests, snow-capped mountains—all empty, devoid even of spirits. She roams aimlessly the next several nights, the Black City looming just out of reach all the while.

After some time, she finds a little village not so different from Redcliffe, but more elegant, the small buildings delicate in an impossible way. Still empty, though. Abandoned like everywhere else. Or maybe not. She wonders if the residents aren’t gone, but hiding. If they’re unused to visitors, they might be wary.

She calls out tentatively, “ _Aneth ara_ ,” then, “ _Iras dar-ma?_ ”

No answer. The sky here is more and less green than in other parts of the Fade, real and unreal simultaneously.

She tries again. “ _Ir garas halanin lasa_.” She isn’t sure what she means by her offer of help, exactly, but something tells her it’s the right thing to say. The voices from the Well, maybe.

“Hello,” someone says just behind her.

Lavellan whirls around, heart racing, phantom hand tingling—but there’s no one there. Not even the faintest wisp.

“Hello?” she echoes. “I can’t see you.”

“Yes,” says the voice. “No one can. I’ve forgotten what it means to be seen.” It speaks in Elvish, but the words barely register to her as anything foreign, maybe more comprehensible than even the common speech ever was. The voice itself is small, frail-sounding, both very old and childlike. It has that strange quality all spirits have, like it’s not one voice but several combined, all fighting to be heard.

“What are you?” she asks.

“I am the peaceful acceptance of _uthenera_ ,” says the voice. “In ages past, I consoled those whose loved ones entered the long sleep. Now there is no _uthenera_. The People live and die like mayflies.” It says this in an almost tragically impassive way, so devoid of feeling as to seem raw with it.

“Oh,” she says with a pang in her chest. “I’m sorry. I know what it’s like to have your purpose taken away.”

There’s a pause. “Yes,” says the spirit, “I can tell you have lost much.”

She clutches at the stump of her arm instinctively. But somehow, inexplicably, she doesn’t think that’s what the spirit is referring to.

The spirit then says, “You are a servant of Mythal. I feel the power of her compulsion from within you.”

“What does it feel like?” asks Lavellan.

“Hungry,” says the spirit.

Hungry. Just as Morrigan said of the Well. _Knowledge begets a hunger for more._ Lavellan clutches tighter at the tied-off sleeve of her tunic.

“I spoke with Mythal long ago, though she was not Mythal then,” says the spirit. “She came to me when her father remained in _uthenera_ and wasted away.”

“You comforted her,” says Lavellan.

“No. She had already accepted the inevitability of his death. She knew centuries before that it would come, when he first entered his slumber.”

“Then why?”

“She thought to enter _uthenera_ herself,” says the spirit. “There was a great war on the horizon, and she had already grown weary of the burden of command.”

Lavellan is reminded suddenly, painfully, of Solas’s words the last time she saw him. _War breeds fear. Fear breeds a desire for simplicity._ She thinks of a younger Mythal, not yet a god, but a woman who was afraid, perhaps, to lead her people to their deaths. Someone much like her, in her early days as Inquisitor. Strange to imagine she would have anything in common with a deity—strange, and also frightening, just as it had been when Mother Giselle likened her to Andraste. Someday the universe will stop drawing parallels between her and martyrs, or so she hopes.

(But she wonders, not for the first time, if it was a likeness Solas had seen, too. Wonders if that was what he meant when he praised her wisdom, or her prowess in battle, or the strength of her leadership. And if that was true—any of it—what did it say about the way he looked at her, the tender way he called her his love, his heart?)

“I assume she didn’t follow through with it,” says Lavellan.

“She did not,” the spirit confirms. “Too much was at stake. Too many depended on her.”

There’s more Lavellan could ask, but it doesn’t feel right, and it isn’t what she came for. She just nods and says, “I know how that feels.” Then she asks, “Is it alright if I stay here a while?”

“Of course,” says the spirit. “There are stories here that time has abandoned. Some of them have forgotten how to be seen, as I have. But there are others that want to share themselves.”

For the rest of the night, Lavellan wanders the little pocket of the Fade, listening to stories that were important to someone once upon a time. It’s bittersweet to realize no one else alive likely knows of this place or the elves who lived here. Solas might, she supposes, but isn’t likely to come back if so. Why would he? What could he say to a spirit whose purpose he’d denied?

Though he might come later with an apology, she thinks, after he’s torn the Veil.

Before she lets herself wake, she returns to the spirit from before, following the small traces of its presence that she only sees because she already knows they’re there.

“Thank you for speaking with me,” she says to it. “I’ve learned a good deal in my time here.”

“If you ever wish to seek _uthenera_ yourself, young one,” says the spirit, “call out to me and I will answer.”

She offers the spirit a smile. “I appreciate the offer, but I’m just as much a mayfly as the rest of my people, unfortunately.”

A long enough silence follows that she wonders, briefly, if the spirit left without her noticing. But then, after a thick, lengthy pause, heavy with expectation, three quiet words ring through her. They shoot down her spine and leave her cold.

“Are you sure?”

A tremor of fear shocks her awake. She moves to sit up quickly, chest heaving, heart thudding wildly. Memories flash through her mind of Solas’s orb, the first searing burn of the Anchor, and the blinding pain of its removal, which had dulled into a feeling of too-sharp lucidity, like a blurry and indistinct world coming violently into focus all at once. She doesn’t want to believe it was significant, not like this. The spirit was confused, or the loss of its purpose had perverted it, and it just—it just—

She lies in her _shemlen_ bed, under a _shemlen_ roof, listening to the roosters crowing outside. If she leaves before the owners of the inn stir, she won’t have to explain why she’s leaving after one night when she paid for three. Better that way. She has coin enough that it doesn’t matter.

The ghost of her arm throbs dully. She clutches at the stump again and closes her eyes.

  
  


“You could have told me you were coming,” Dorian says reprovingly once he releases her and takes a step back. “If I’d known, I would have sent an armed escort to carry you here, maybe feed you grapes along the way. It would have been a great deal faster _and_ , dare I say, less unpleasant.”

“Did you really expect me to give up the chance to surprise you and the handful of guards who interrogated me when I showed up at your door?” says Lavellan, grinning in spite of herself.

Dorian heaves out a put-upon sigh. “I suppose not. Your talent for poor decision-making is part of your unfathomable charm.” He softens, the creases on his forehead and under his eyes smoothing, returning him to the Dorian she remembers. “But I take it this wasn’t a social call.”

If it were a social call, she would have sent word ahead via message crystal, would have taken her time coming here, would have brought some sort of escort—would, frankly, have brought Cullen and a small crew of whatever soldiers were on hand. She knows the dangers here and everywhere, and she knows Dorian. But there was no time for any of that. She’d crossed through Nevarra and into the Imperium herself, calling in favor after favor, never stopping anywhere long enough for people to realize who she was. With her bare face and appropriately shabby clothes, she’d passed as a commoner, and a pitiful one at that.

“I have business in Minrathous,” she says. “I’m looking for a rare book that’s been outlawed. I was hoping you could help, since I don’t know any other rebellious archivists in the area.”

“What sort of book is it? A treatise on fatal illnesses in the practice of blood magic? Read that the other week. Fascinating stuff. There are theories, you know, that disease might be caused by _dirt_.”

“More and less scandalous than that,” says Lavellan. “It’s _The Collected Genealogies Following the Rebellions of Vol Dorma and Marnas Pell_.”

Dorian looks taken aback, eyes widening and mouth hanging silently open, like he’s abandoned whatever irreverent comment he had waiting on his tongue. “Ah,” he says after a moment, “ _that_ sort of book.”

“Do you think you can find it?” she asks.

“I can try, at the very least.” He looks ready to say something else, taking in a breath in preparation, but instead lets out another sigh. “It may take some time.”

“How long?”

“Weeks, if not longer. Finding connections that are both willing and reliable could be difficult.” Then he adds, “You’ll be staying here in the meantime, I imagine.”

“If you’re offering,” she says.

The guest room where he puts her up is less extravagant than her quarters at Skyhold—lucky thing, too, as she’s had enough stained glass and high balconies for a lifetime—but still lavish, decorated with delicate baubles and useless finery. The curtains, tall and heavy and trimmed with velvet, are impossible for her to pull back on her own with her one arm. But the servants seem willing enough to help—and they _are_ servants, Dorian had assured her. Escaped slaves, all of them, who safely make a living at his estate until they get on their feet. Some people are too proud for charity, but giving away coin is easy if you’re clever about it.

“Do you need anything else, Mistress Lavellan?” a young serving girl named Rissa asks after pulling the curtains back from the windows. She’s strong for her size, wiry, and moves through the halls without even the slightest whisper of sound. The makings of a good assassin, Lavellan thinks absently, because she still hasn’t unlearned how to think about everything in terms of strategy. But she’s hard not to notice, Rissa; while her pointed ears and meek disposition render her all but invisible, what marks her as noteworthy is the set of long, jagged scars running from the bridge of her nose down to her jaw.

“From a hunting dog,” she’d said, and elaborated no further.

“That’s all, thank you,” says Lavellan. Trying to get the servants to stop calling her _mistress_ has proven fruitless. “Unless you’d care to sit with me a moment, _da’len_.”

“Certainly.” Rissa stands uncertainly a moment, then, following Lavellan’s gesture, takes a seat at the end of the bed, by the desk where Lavellan sits with her stacks of papers and books, already at work on her daily cataloging and translating. Craning her neck toward the desk with a look of curiosity, the girl asks, “Are you a scholar?”

Lavellan snorts. “Not exactly. Though I’m sure it would terrify the Chantry if I were.” She takes hold of one of the books, then pauses. “Can you read?”

Rissa starts to shake her head but aborts the gesture mid-movement. “A little,” she says. “Master Pavus”—the title makes Lavellan flinch—“has hired a tutor to come twice a week and give us lessons. I know what my name looks like, and a few basic things besides. Signs, mostly.”

“I could teach you a few things while I’m here, too, if you’d like,” says Lavellan. A thought occurs to her, and she doesn’t stop to consider it before adding, “I could even teach you some Elvish.”

“Oh, I—” Rissa wrings her hands. “Thank you, mistress, but I don’t know if there would be, um, much opportunity to use it here.”

“There might,” Lavellan says grimly. “For my peace of mind, could I teach you a few phrases that may be important somewhere down the line?”

“Sure,” says Rissa. “I like learning anyway.”

“Alright, listen and repeat after me.” Lavellan takes a steadying breath to keep her voice from shaking as she repeats words uttered to her only once: “ _Nuvenas mana helanin, dirth bellasa ma_.”

  
  


It starts off the same as any other dream: a clearing in the woods, and Solas on the other side of it, gazing across at her mournfully, the distance between them somehow insurmountable. Every time she’s tried to reach out, he’s vanished, as if he had never been there at all. So she stands still, watching him as he watches her, both silent.

In the dream forest, it’s morning, late spring or early summer. Sunlight pours through the gaps in the leaves in little constellations of light. The place smells familiar: distant ocean salt intertwining with fragrant, mossy bark on the light breeze. They’ve been here before. She showed it to him once, when he asked to see if she could move the Fade the way Dreamers can. It’s a place she knows well, but hasn’t seen in the flesh for years beyond counting.

And he, too, is familiar, is the Solas she remembers—the old one, the proud but homely apostate, not the noble, unflappable demigod clad in elegant armor and furs. She’s never been able to tell if these are dreams or visitations, but if it _is_ him, the real him, she couldn’t say why he would appear in a form like this. In a deception.

“Something’s changed in you.”

His voice startles her. It has the same air as when he would remark on something only faintly interesting. An almost neutral acknowledgment of fact.

She clucks her tongue. “Really? Something apart from the obvious?”

“You have a quality you did not before,” he says, ignoring her comment. “It radiates from within you.”

“Then we’ve both changed,” she says. “You’ve lost something. It’s made you weak.”

“Perhaps.” Also neutral. Objective, careful, distant.

It’s not a dream. The realization is accompanied by a sudden tightness in her chest.

“What do you want, Solas?” she asks.

“To understand,” he says. “You are in Tevinter. Why?”

Clenching her jaw, she replies, “I’m recruiting, same as you.”

“Oh? Then you’ve chosen well. The elves of the Imperium deserve a glimmer of hope, however faint or short-lived.”

“ _Venavis_ ,” she snaps. “Don’t patronize me. _Ma banal dirth’a ir suledin._ ”

“ _Ir abelas_.” He bows his head courteously. “I didn’t mean to undermine your efforts.”

Just like that, they reach an impasse. If she opens her mouth to speak again, she doesn’t know what might come out—if her next words will be ones of sorrow, or fury, or just a terrible, heartfelt plea for reconciliation. But Solas is equally silent, his expression still unhappy, but not quite committing to its sadness. She wishes she could get close enough to reach out and touch him. The urge is so great she feels it itching in her phantom hand just as much as her real one. (Though she doesn’t know what form the touch would take, either; doesn’t know if she would strike him or hold him lovingly, kiss him or tear him apart. Regardless, he doesn’t appear willing to give her the chance. She can’t really fault him for it.)

“You speak our language differently,” he says at length. “ _Iras ma dirthara?_ ”

“ _Emma vir’abelasan_ ,” she says. The change to Elvish from there is seamless and natural. “The voices were willing to teach me. More so than you were,” she can’t help but add.

“You never asked,” he says, frowning deeply. “I would have been happy to share it with you.”

She feels herself bristle. “As happy as you were to tell me who you were and where you came from?”

“Separate matters. Anything I said about myself had to be shrouded in half-truths. Nothing is dishonest about language itself.”

The words come out instinctively: “Dread Wolf take you.” And once she realizes she’s said them, she feels a flush of mortification wash over her. The idiocy of threatening someone with their own name. Unthinkable.

“It would certainly make things easier for you if I did,” he says.

“No,” she says, “it wouldn’t.”

He sighs out her name with pained disappointment, like a reprimand. Why? Is he the only one who’s allowed to regret their being enemies?

“No,” he says when she voices the question indignantly, “but you have made things more difficult than they need to be.”

She wants to say, _The only one making things difficult is you, with your ridiculous plans and your stubborn insistence that the solution you’ve come up with is the only viable one_ , because that’s the fact of the matter. The worst part of it, in her eyes, is that if he chose to use his knowledge and power to help their people instead of destroying them, he could change everything—not only for the elves, but for all of Thedas. The two of them together could save the world, and it would be so _easy_. And the only thing keeping them from doing that is misplaced guilt, and wistful longing for a people and place and state of being that no longer exist. And suddenly, belatedly, Lavellan thinks she understands Sera’s resentment of nostalgia. Why go back to the imperfect way that things used to be when there’s so much room to look forward?

She doesn’t say any of that. It wouldn’t get them anywhere. She says, “You don’t really think that. You want me to make you doubt. You’ve intentionally kept me as your enemy so I can keep fighting against you.”

He chuckles. “If there has to be any opposition, I would rather it were you, yes. Who else would be worthy?” Then, sobering, “I would be lying if I said I didn’t hope you succeeded.”

“You’re not a very good villain,” she says.

“I don’t try to be.”

“Clearly,” she mutters. “You did make your nemesis immortal, after all.”

She half expects him to stare in confusion and deny it, maybe laugh at her. But he doesn’t. He closes his eyes for a brief, horrible moment, looking defeated. When he opens them again, his brow is knit contritely.

“That… was not my intent,” he says. “I only meant to reverse the effects of the Anchor. I overextended.” A pause. “I’d hoped you wouldn’t find out until I could fix my mistake.”

Her whole body buzzes with a nameless anxiety. “Why?”

“I knew it would upset you. If I—”

“Then you didn’t do it on purpose?” she cuts in.

“No.” For the first time in a long, long while, he looks thrown. She can’t even think of the last time she saw surprise on his face, or any sort of break in his composure. “What would that accomplish?”

“I don’t know,” she says. “I thought—” She can’t say what she thought. She’d been so ready to accuse him of sentimentality, or selfishness, or some combination of the two. Because the only explanation she’d been able to think of herself was that he’d done it to tie them together inexorably, to keep her. Why else would he make her live forever like he does? Why else would he appear to her like this, as the Solas she loved, in a place so dear to her, and talk as if there’s a future for them?

Shamefully, privately, in spite of her resentment and fear toward the longevity that’s been forced on her, she’d found something about it faintly romantic. It would mean he didn’t want to imagine a time when she wasn’t around, a sentiment she’s felt keenly, too, and grieved over—because for two years he _was_ gone, and when he returned he wasn’t hers anymore, not really. There’s something more staggering about that than real, total loss, because it’s so unnecessary. But now he asks, _What would that accomplish?_ And she can’t give the obvious answer, not like this.

She just says again, “I don’t know.” It’s a lie, but it’s the only safe response.

“Do you want to keep it?” he asks too gently.

“No,” she says at once. “Not if things stay the way they are.”

He nods as if he understands. She doesn’t think he does.

Hesitantly, reluctantly, she adds, “But I don’t trust you to take it away, either.”

“Ah.”

He doesn’t seem to know what to say. Neither does she. The weight of their estrangement is heavy on both of them. She isn’t going to apologize, though, for saying a necessary truth. And anyway, he doesn’t have the right to be upset about something he caused. He knew the consequences. He’s reaping them now.

“I never wanted,” he starts, then falters. There’s a deep, profound look of regret in his eyes. “I’m sorry. You deserved better.”

“I did,” she agrees.

  
  


Rissa turns out to be a quick study. She soaks up information with a speed and enthusiasm Lavellan’s never seen before, like it feeds her, sustains her. And passing on knowledge—even necessary, useful knowledge that Lavellan couldn’t keep to herself if she wanted to—is its own gift. It’s a mutually beneficial arrangement.

Mostly, though, Lavellan’s days are spent studying up on history, comparing legends with what she now knows to be true, compiling a lexicon to eventually distribute if (when) the bright future comes. It will be helpful to someone either way, she thinks.

She rarely sees Dorian. For all that it’s his home, he doesn’t stick around much, going off on business for days at a time and looking more and more haggard after each trip. This gradual revolution is a battle of attrition, she thinks, and it’s wearing him down steadily, markedly. Even Maevaris, the singular time Lavellan meets her in the flesh, seems concerned. More than once, Lavellan starts on letters to send back south, earnest requests for intervention. She never gets much further than _Dear Cullen_ before stopping and crumpling the paper into a ball. It took her seventeen days to make the trip here herself; from the arling of Redcliffe, with the inevitable small contingent, it would be even longer. She might be gone before that anyway. Hopefully will, at least.

It takes three weeks and six days for Dorian’s connections to come through with the book. She begins poring over its contents immediately, looking through names, dates of birth and death, locations, marriages. Sometimes there are names of Dalish clans, ones she recognizes or doesn’t—even, on one occasion, her own. Other times she sees dates and costs of purchase. That stirs an anger in her that goes so far beyond pure rage it becomes a different feeling entirely, a hot, bright energy gathering just under her skin. If she had magic, she thinks it would erupt out of her.

Within a few days after that, she has a workable list of starting points. After she’s chased down a few leads in Minrathous and sent word to her contacts back in Orlais and Ferelden, she’ll head south along the coast to Asariel. Then Marnas Pell, Vol Dorma, and down along the Imperial Highway. Rumors talk of slaver caravans disappearing just north of the Silent Plains. With any luck, she’ll find the cause, though she already has suspicions.

“You look well,” Solas says during another encounter in the Fade. Skyhold this time. The empty courtyard is chilling, wrong. “I assume you’ve been successful in your plans?” The clothes he has on now are the same ones he wore when she found him on the other side of the eluvian, and it feels more honest. Like he’s finally admitting to what he is.

She says nothing. Doesn’t even look at him. She’s seated on the bench where Cassandra (not Divine, but not just a woman, either—already a legend, a hero, well before Lavellan’s own rise to fame) would take breaks to meditate or reread Varric’s books. Lavellan can see why: It’s peaceful and picturesque, calming. A quiet little section of the world.

Solas breaks that quiet, though, saying, “I’m not here as your enemy, my heart.”

“If we’re enemies by nature,” she says, looking up at the green-tinged sky, “what else could you be here as?” She ignores the endearment. It isn’t worth commenting on.

“Your equal.”

She huffs derisively.

“The agents I stationed near Weisshaupt have gone silent,” he says. “There’s been no word from that region in nearly a week. If you plan on continuing your operations in the north, I would recommend investigating—”

“With what army?” she interrupts. She looks down finally to meet his eyes, fixing him with a level, unimpressed gaze. “Shall I try conscripting from the Magisterium?” There’s no argument from her, though, that the issue needs looking into. The last time she spoke to Varric, he was concerned about Hawke, about the things his friend was telling him and the things she very clearly wasn’t. If the Champion of Kirkwall couldn’t prevent disaster from unfolding, that’s cause for worry.

“You could go with a small party,” he says. “In fact, subtlety may be the best approach.”

“Right,” Lavellan says, scoffing. “I’m fit for adventuring. Thanks to you, my aim’s gotten better than ever.”

He shakes his head. “You don’t need to fight with them in order to lead them.”

She scrubs her hand over her face tiredly. She’s had conversations like this before—too many of them to count, in fact. Thom and Cassandra were the most insistent that she could still lead from the front, because her inspiration and sense, more so than her fighting ability, are what make her worth following. But Cullen, at least, had understood her reservations. Said he didn’t blame her for feeling like she’d lost the right to command. Said he knew how it felt to think yourself a hypocrite for expecting anyone to do what you can’t do yourself. He didn’t know what it was like to be in her position, he said, but he was intimately familiar with self-doubt and frustration and brokenness. And in spite of that, or perhaps because of it, he believed in her regardless. If she wanted to continue adventuring, he felt she could.

“I’m not sure I’d want to,” she says now. “But it’s moot anyway. There’s no one to lead.”

“On the contrary,” says Solas. “You have Dorian, do you not?”

Not really, she thinks. “I doubt he—”

“You could easily find Cole again as well,” he continues. “But most importantly, you know where to find an invaluable ally who has a vested interest in protecting the Champion.”

Her suspicions were right, then. Still, she sighs. “Why are you telling me all of this, Solas?”

“Because I care, whether or not you want to believe it,” he says.

“Excuse me if I’m skeptical on that point.”

“Did you hear me when I said I hoped you would succeed?” He takes a step toward her, and she jumps to her feet at once, rigid and defensive, ready to spring away at a moment’s notice. “If you are victorious, I want the world you live in to be a good one. And even should you fail, the people of Thedas deserve comfort in their final days.”

“You could be a part of it, too, Solas,” she says, unable to stop the words from bursting forth. “You know that. You could help me build that world.”

“I can’t,” he says. Solemn and final and sad. “There is nothing you can do to sway me from my course. Though I appreciate that you continue to try.”

“I try because the only other option is to let you destroy everything,” she says. “Not much of a choice, if you ask me.”

He gazes at her a long moment and she gazes wordlessly back. She doesn’t cry or seethe or glare, but wants to. Something is passing between them that neither of them can voice, and she won’t distract from it.

Then the moment ends. He says to her, “If I succeed, I will make sure the People know your name, but every legend they tell will fall short of what you truly were.”

Doesn’t cry. Doesn’t seethe. Doesn’t glare. Wants to. She balls her hand into a fist. “And what’s that?”

“The best of us,” he says, almost smiling. “The hero they deserved.”

And it’s supposed to mean something to her, supposed to make her feel regret or sorrow, or maybe righteous fury, but it doesn’t feel like it means anything at all. She isn’t a hero. She never asked to be one. She isn’t a martyr like Andraste, or Mythal, or the version of herself the Dread Wolf sees her as. The only thing she’s ever been is herself, and all she’s ever tried to do is be Good and Fair and Kind. Decency should not be an exemplary thing. Helping people, loving them, wanting to see them grow and be free—these are expected. She hates that these things have been twisted into noble pursuits, and made anyone who believes in them a revolutionary, and led to so much chaos and dissent.

She says, “It’s too bad you won’t get the chance. I don’t intend to fail.”

To her surprise, he chuckles. “That is exactly why I hope you don’t.”

He closes the distance between them. The touch of his hand with its cold, heavy gauntlet makes her flinch, her body remembering what happened the last time he touched her. It doesn’t matter that this is a dream. The sensation is still real and frightening—frightening even when he softly kisses her, because that, too, is a reminder of terrible agony. But she doesn’t push him away; she kisses him back, less desperately than she wants to.

“Travel safely,” he whispers against her mouth. “I don’t want to lose you.”

She can’t help the short laugh that bubbles out of her. Reaching up to cup his cheek with her hand, she grins and says, “My heart. You already have.”

**Author's Note:**

> i hope the elvish bits weren't too terribly confusing. i wanted to only use words and phrases (and variations thereof) that existed in canon, which meant taking some... linguistic liberties. some loose translations:  
>   
>  _Aneth ara. Iras dar-ma?_ \- Hello. Where are you?  
>  _Ir garas halanin lasa._ \- I want to help.  
>  _Nuvenas mana helanin, dirth bellasa ma._ \- unknown; said by the guardian spirit who asks for Fen'Harel's secret greeting  
>  _Venavis._ \- Stop.  
>  _Ma banal dirth'a ir suledin._ \- You know nothing of what I've endured.  
>  _Iras ma dirthara?_ \- Where did you learn?  
>  _Emma vir'abelasan._ \- Within the Well of Sorrows.
> 
> also, the allusions to fenris running around and killing slavers was in honor of my finding out about the blue wraith comics (tho as of writing this i hadn't read them yet, so i kept the references intentionally vague, oop)
> 
> if you liked this, please let me know! this is a really self-indulgent project, but i'd still very much like to hear what people think about it 💕


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